POLITICS >Women should not laugh in public, Turkish deputy PM says

Women should not laugh out loud in public, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç has said while complaining about “moral corruption” in Turkey.

Speaking during an Eid el-Fitr meeting on July 28, Arınç described his ideal of the chaste man or woman, saying they should both have a sense of shame and honor.

“Chastity is so important. It is not only a name. It is an ornament for both women and men. [She] will have chasteness. Man will have it, too. He will not be a womanizer. He will be bound to his wife. He will love his children. [The woman] will know what is haram and not haram. She will not laugh in public. She will not be inviting in her attitudes and will protect her chasteness,” Arınç said, adding that people had abandoned their values today.

People needs to discover the Quran once again, Arınç said, adding that there had been a regression on moral grounds.

“Where are our girls, who slightly blush, lower their heads and turn their eyes away when we look at their face, becoming the symbol of chastity?” he said.

He said some TV series geared toward young people had because teenagers to grow up only as “sex addicts,” accusing those who abuse the excitement of youths with publications on TV, the web, newspapers, or in educational places, especially in universities.

Arınç also complained about high consumption, referring to the number of cars and mobile phones that individuals have.

Targeting women once more, Arınç said women talk about unnecessary things on the phone.

“Women give each other meal recipes while speaking on the mobile phone. ‘What else is going on?’ ‘What happened to Ayşe’s daughter?’ ‘When is the wedding?’ Talk about this face to face,” he said.

People should not use their personal cars unnecessarily, he also said, adding that even if the Nile River was full of oil, there would not be enough fuel to power cars.

Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, who is running for the presidency against Arınç’s boss, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, commented on Arınç’s statement via Twitter, saying Turkey needed women to laugh, as well as to hear everybody’s happy laughter more than anything.

"If a man can think only this way in a bayram day, then this mentality has a problem. [Prime Minister Recep] Tayyip Erdoğan has the same mentality problem," the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) deputy chair Burhan Şenatalar said July 29.

"Arınç claims that Turkey is in moral collapse, but his own party has been governing the country for the past 12 years," said Çetin Elmas, the chief advisor of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) chair Devlet Bahçeli.

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy parliamentary head Pervin Buldan has even joined the social media protest. "From now on, we will respond to all statements by Arınç by laughing," Buldan tweeted.